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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 3 Hansard (26 March) . . Page.. 647 ..

Mr De Domenico: I raise a point of order, Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker. Mr Whitecross looked at Mrs Carnell and suggested that Mrs Carnell was hypocritical. We have been through that before. I ask you to rule that that is unparliamentary.

MR TEMPORARY DEPUTY SPEAKER: No, there is no point of order. He was talking in general terms about positions. Whether he looked at someone or not is another matter.

MR WHITECROSS: Perhaps the worst thing about the characteristics of Mrs Carnell which have characterised her handling of this dispute is that she just does not care. She just does not care about the inconvenience to the community. She does not care about the lost money. She does not care about the hardship. She does not care about whether her work force gets a pay rise. She does not care about cooperating with them. She does not care whether the Industrial Relations Commission thinks that her actions are grossly discourteous. She just does not care. All that she cares about is herself. She cares about getting things her own way. She cares about winning her own public relations war. She cares only about her own power and her own ego. What she does not care about, Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, is resolving this dispute. The dispute is still unresolved. She is still in conflict with her work force, and the community have a right to be angry about that. They have a right to be angry about the way she has mishandled this dispute.

MR TEMPORARY DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! The member's time has expired.

MRS CARNELL (Chief Minister) (3.49): Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, this first matter of public importance from Mr Whitecross is a very interesting one. He is getting to the advanced stages of the acting classes. It is really going down quite well now. The performance simply has been lost on this Assembly and on the whole of the ACT community. I think he has really been dumped on by his deputy to bring this matter of public importance forward today. In a situation where we now have agreements and all bans lifted from 12 of 16 unions, and discussions going on with all of the other unions, it seems a very interesting day to bring forward such a diatribe.

I would like to take this opportunity to remind members of the strong line and the strong involvement that those opposite have had in this protracted industrial dispute. They have always said that the Government really should cave in to the Trades and Labour Council and their collective push. Mr Berry has made that clear the whole way through. Mr Whitecross has said, or inferred, similar things - just cave in, give them what they want, and then we will not have any bans.

As all of those opposite and those in this Assembly would know, the first claim by the union was 9 per cent fully budget supplemented over 18 months. If it had been up to those opposite, we would have caved in immediately. No bans; fine. All on the table. A $27m price tag to the ACT community; a $27m full year effect; not one-off, but every single year. The second even more unusual request was for 14.7 per cent over 21/2 years, with 11.7 per cent of that fully budget supplemented. The ACT taxpayer simply cannot afford that amount of money. But those opposite have done this before. They have given

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